Slashdot Mirror
Google Should Be Broken Up, Say European MPs
An anonymous reader is one of many to send word that the European Parliament has voted 384 to 174 in favor of unbundling search engines from other commercial services in order to ensure competition. "The European Parliament has voted in favor of breaking Google up, as a solution to complaints that it favors is own services in search results. Politicians have no power to enforce a break-up, but the landmark vote sends a clear message to European regulators to get tough on the net giant. US politicians and trade bodies have voiced their dismay at the vote. The ultimate decision will rest with EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager. She has inherited the anti-competitive case lodged by Google's rivals in 2010. Google has around 90% market share for search in Europe. The Commission has never before ordered the break-up of any company, and many believe it is unlikely to do so now. But politicians are desperate to find a solution to the long-running anti-competitive dispute with Google."
Why don't the Europeans start their own search and ad engine?
Because that would be entirely beside the point.
What I don't understand here is Google does not have a monopoly on search services.
This actually doesn't have THAT much to do with monopoly at all. Even in a highly competitive market with many search engine participants the argument to unbundle search engines from other products makes a lot of sense.
Just as unbundling internet access from other network services makes a lot of sense.
The search engines effectively are the gateways to the internet. To operate effectively it's best if they simply compete at being the best search engine, instead of being crippled by constantly being subverted by the other commerical interests of the parent company that wishes to drive consumers to particular pages they have interests in rather than merely being the best at return the pages the consumer wants.
I'm not sure I see what's wrong with that.
Because your fixated on whether there is competition. Whether or not there is competition is beside the point. If your bank forces you to open savings accounts and credit cards with them to have a mortage that bundling is anti-consumer and illegal... period. Because that sort of product tying has been deemed harmful.
Competition isn't the issue. It doesn't matter if there are 5 or 10 other banks to choose from. (Especially if they all do it too.)
Your "analogy" fails. "Because that sort of product tying has been deemed harmful." Because there's money involved. Google forces nothing of that nature. If you're displeased with their service, pop another browser. The EU is simply displaying the puny man syndrome.
Your "analogy" fails.Because there's money involved.
As there is in search.
. Google forces nothing of that nature.
Ultimately every search engine controls what pages i see when i search for something.
As a society its reasonable proposition that we would want our search engines to be competing on simply being the best search engine, without risk of it quietly subverting its integrety to push any other agenda / product / viewpoint / etc.
Unbundling them from commercial interests would be a part of that goal.
I'm not saying we should necessarily do this, or that simply un-bundling them would solve all the potential problems either. I'm just saying that its a valid argument.
If you're displeased with their service, pop another browser.
And that solves what exactly? It neither corrects the behaviour you don't want from google, nor assures you the 'next browser' isn't engaging in precisely the same thing.
ITT: Fools who are apoplectic over the idea of Apple exercising control of its app ecosystem and Microsoft bundling a browser with their OS find a way to contort themselves into the illogical stance that Google engaging in the same type of practices is "totally for our own good, fuck the EU."
You nerds never cease to amaze me.
If your bank forces you to open savings accounts and credit cards with them to have a mortage that bundling is anti-consumer and illegal... period.
When did Google ever start forcing users to sign up just to search? I'm pretty sure that's not a thing. Just like banks don't force you to have savings accounts and credit cards with them in order to have a mortgage with them, Google doesn't force you to sign up for anything to either search, or to show up as #1 in search. For the latter, all you've got to do is be the most popular thing for that search query on the internet.
If you want to show up in a prominent place on the search page for a particular query, even though you aren't #1 (or even #10, or whatever) on the internet for that query, well, that's going to cost you.
For Google's services, I don't see what search has to do with any of it. Is Google artificially bumping themselves in the rankings? I'm not sure if the EU is aware, but Google is absurdly popular. I'd be shocked if Gmail didn't come up #1 in a search for email, and low and behold it does. #1 on Google and #2 on Bing, somehow Yahoo comes up first on Bing, while MS takes up #2 and #3 on Google. However, Google's cloud service comes up #4 on their own engine and #7 on Bing. iCloud is the first commercial service on both (actually #1 and #3 on Bing).
So pretty similar results, and MS certainly isn't going to fix Google results in Bing. The EU is full of shit. Bundling isn't harmful unless it is exploited, period. It often leads to a greater overall benefit, as products are more likely to be able to interconnect. If there is evidence of exploitation, that's different, and the EU should drop the hammer on them. But there isn't any evidence that that is going on here that I've seen, so this is almost certainly just politicians being dickweeds at the behest of people who paid them a lot of money.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Why don't the Europeans start their own search and ad engine?
Oh, because they would lose?
What I don't understand here is Google does not have a monopoly on search services. They're just damn good at it and the market, with several other choices including Bing!, votes with its clicks. I'm not sure I see what's wrong with that.
This isn't about a monopoly per se. The issue is that Google has got the same business unit that handles their web search operation also pushing Google services. The result is that Google is actively discriminating against competing services and since these competitors don't have their own search engine with a dominant market share to fall back they are proverbially stuck up shit creek without a paddle. It's a bit as if, say America Online, owned world's entire internet backbone and was preventing competing ISPS world wide from accessing that backbone on equal terms in order to gain a competitive advantage for their own ISP division. That being said Google has an 80% market share in the US/Europe and that pretty much makes them a monopoly in my book or at the very least something pretty close to a monopoly and monopolies are IMHO usually bad. Many of the people on this forum screamed their heads off in the past when Microsoft was doing something like this. Instead Googles army of fanboys is now out in force again trying to paint a big yellow smiley over the whole thing.
It's been said before. "F-ck the EU..."
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Because your fixated on whether there is competition. Whether or not there is competition is beside the point. If your bank forces you to open savings accounts and credit cards with them to have a mortage that bundling is anti-consumer and illegal... period. Because that sort of product tying has been deemed harmful
Well, the fact of the matter is that Google isn't forcing anyone to do anything. They provide methods to extract your data and stop using their services if you wish. What people seem to be upset about is that they are really good at what they do and everyone wants to use their services. It isn't a crime to be successful, contrary to what Microsoft and their paid off politicians in the EU are trying to connive. Add to the fact that Google is an American company. If Google was a German company we wouldn't be talking about this. No one has alleged any crime or harm to consumers... rather this is about competitor profits. Microsoft is just playing their old FUD game. They figure even if they don't win the lawsuit or get Google to split up (which they won't) they'll sow enough FUD to make people believe Google is the evil empire. This is just a bunch of sabre rattling. At the end of the day the only way the EU is going to stop people from using Google is to order their IP addresses be blocked - and that just ain't gonna happen. People would just freak out.
Because your fixated on whether there is competition. Whether or not there is competition is beside the point. If your bank forces you to open savings accounts and credit cards with them to have a mortage that bundling is anti-consumer and illegal... period. Because that sort of product tying has been deemed harmful.
What does Google bundle with its search engine? I do not need to use Chrome to access Google search. I do not have to have a GMail account, nor use Google+. I can use Google Search from iOS or Windows Phone or Blackberry OS. What is the bundling that you're concerned about?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Europeans politicians just hate successful companies.
FTFY.
The resolution underlines that "the online search market is of particular importance in ensuring competitive conditions within the digital single market" and welcomes the Commission’s pledges to investigate further the search engines’ practices.
It calls on the Commission "to prevent any abuse in the marketing of interlinked services by operators of search engines", stressing the importance of non-discriminatory online search. "Indexation, evaluation, presentation and ranking by search engines must be unbiased and transparent", MEPs say.
And it's also not only unenforceable, but impossible. Every evaluation and ranking algorithm that is not based off a random number generator carries, by definition, biases favoring some criteria over others. There will always be someone crying foul because they're lower in the rankings. This is a tar pit.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
When did Google ever start forcing users to sign up just to search?
You are missing the point. The point is not whether google is illegally tying products, because they are not. The point is that as a society we deemed that tying products was harmful.
Just as we could deem that a search engine company providing other services is harmful. Not because its a form of illegal tying, but because its harmful in similar ways.
. Bundling isn't harmful unless it is exploited, period.
And that's a great study you just did. I mean, you searched for "email" and you searched for "cloud" and you looked at the first 3 results in no less than 2 different search engines. Because clearly if google was going to manipulate the results they would ONLY do in the most blatantly obvious evil with a capital E way possible.
Well, I'm convinced.
It often leads to a greater overall benefit, as products are more likely to be able to interconnect.
What needs to interconnect with a "search" engine?
If there is evidence of exploitation, that's different, and the EU should drop the hammer on them.
Because it would be wrong for society to proactively decide what the rules it lives by are? It can only react to abuse?
But there isn't any evidence that that is going on here that I've seen,
And you've clearly settled the matter there, right? ;)
so this is almost certainly just politicians being dickweeds at the behest of people who paid them a lot of money.
Who benefits financially from search engines being decoupled from other commercial pursuits and thus paid these politicians lots of money to make it happen. I'm in agreement with you that "follow the money" is a good maxim to have when looking at politics ... so where does it lead us here? That's a good question.
This is very obvious in software where they want you to buy into the Microsoft stack or the Apple stack or the Google stack. If the bits and pieces were compatible and interchangeable you'd see a lot more competition and many smaller third parties providing a few parts.
We're talking about search here. What's the Google Stack here? They have a desktop operating system (Chromebook) a browser (Chrome) and a search engine (Google Search). Google doesn't give me meaningfully different results if I use Microsoft's OS and Mozilla's web browser. I haven't tried this myself, but I hear you can use Google's browser and/or Google's OS to get the same results from Microsoft's search engine that you'd get if you were using the "Microsoft stack."
There is absolutely NO switching cost involved in changing search engines. The European regulators are looking for a bribe here, and I hope Google tells them to crawl the web themselves.
So you are saying that private companies should build and conduct business the way society tells them to, for the benefit of society. That's pretty much the view of economics fascism advocated. It doesn't work.
That's a pretty simpleminded view of it. Next you'll be telling me that consumers shouldn't be able to regulate companies to prevent them from using lead paint in toys because: fascism.
Time to break up the EU. They think they're more important than they are. They think their rules should apply worldwide. Wrong-o.
Next thing we know we're going to have the EU extremists starting WWIII to enforce their rules on all of us. Time to just break the EU up now and be done with it. Preventative maintenance.